


To Live Until I Die

by lhknox



Series: in my veins - a hospital au [2]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Romance, Secret Relationship, i swear to god no lesbians die
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-06-22
Packaged: 2019-05-26 19:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15007406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lhknox/pseuds/lhknox
Summary: “Are we ever gonna tell our friends we’re dating?”alex and maggie been dating in secret for five months. but now that they're ready, will they get the chance to tell their friends?





	To Live Until I Die

**Author's Note:**

> a sequel to Shot. you don't have to have read it, but it doesn't hurt. also it's a lot more lighthearted than this so it all balances out in the end.
> 
> written while i was mostly half asleep so unbeta'd and sad
> 
> based around the izzie and denny scene from greys anatomy you know the one. title from until i die by brandi carlisle
> 
> i swear to god, no lesbians die.

“I have a question,” Maggie says, as she pulls on her pants. Alex sits up, pulling on her scrubs. She admires Maggie for a moment; the way her dark hair falls over face, the defined outline of her abs. Sometimes she can’t believe she managed to find Maggie, that she managed to keep Maggie in her life for four months without fucking up too badly. Maggie starts buttoning up her shirt. Alex frowns at having lost her favorite view.

 

“Alex,” Maggie says, rolling her eyes when she sees Alex staring at her chest.

 

“Huh?”

 

“I have a question.”

 

“Oh, yeah. Right. What’s up?”

 

Maggie hesitates. “Are we ever gonna tell our friends we’re dating?”

 

“Uh…” Alex doesn’t know what to say. But apparently her hesitation was the wrong move. Maggie huffs and throws on her leather jacket, pocketing her badge and phone that lies on the bare hospital nightstand.

 

“Forget I ever said anything,” Maggie mutters, before leaving the room and slamming the door shut behind her.

 

“Shit.” Alex scrambles to throw her pants on and gather her things before chasing after her. Maggie’s halfway down the hallway by the time Alex catches up with her, slightly out of breath. She walks a little too close to her, their arms touching. Maggie pulls away.

 

“Can we talk about this please?”

 

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

 

“You’re upset. We should talk about it.”

 

“Aren’t you scared someone will see us together?”

 

“Don’t be stupid.” 

 

Maggie stops, whirling around to face Alex.

 

“Oh, so now I’m stupid?”

 

“No, I-”

 

Maggie keeps walking. Alex grabs her by her wrist, and throws open a supply closet. She pulls Maggie into it, and shuts them in together.

 

“Alex,” Maggie says sternly. Alex reaches up, and takes Maggie’s face softly in her hands. 

 

“Please,” she whispers. “Talk to me.”

 

“Look. We don’t have to talk about it right now. But I want to talk about it at some point. Because we’ve been dating for what, four months-”

 

“- Almost five.”

 

“We’ve been dating for almost five months and nobody knows about us.”

 

“I thought you wanted that; we decided we weren’t going to tell anybody together, remember?”

 

“When we started out we were keeping it a secret so we had a chance to figure out what this was before Winn lost his mind or we had to deal with Lucy’s shit. But it’s been four months-”

 

“Almost five,” Alex whispers.

 

“Exactly,” Maggie smiles sadly. “And I feel like you’re ashamed of me.”

 

Alex’s jaw drops in shock.

 

“Maggie, you’re the best thing in my life,” she tells her, “I could never be ashamed of you.”

 

“Then why haven’t we told anybody?”

 

“Because, I don’t know, I like having this between us. I like having something that’s just ours and nobody else’s.”

 

“Alex, I lo…” Alex feels her heart stop in her chest. “I really like you. But I’m sick of feeling like a teenager sneaking around and not being able to talk about you to my friends.”

 

“All of your friends are detectives, if they haven’t figured it out by now they don’t deserve to know.”

 

Maggie laughs despite herself.

 

“Tonight,” Alex promises. “Tonight we’ll go out for drinks with your squad and then drop in at game night and we’ll tell every single one of our friends that we’re-” dating? In love? “Together.”

 

“You promise?”

 

“Cross my heart,” she says.

 

Maggie leans up and kisses Alex. It’s soft and it’s simple and Alex’s heart swells with affection for her. She feels foolish, having kept their relationship quiet for so long. Maggie is right to have pushed her; it’s ready for people to know.

 

“You want me to leave first, don’t you?” Maggie says.

 

“Pick me up from work tonight, my shift finishes at seven.”

 

Maggie kisses her once more, before leaving Alex alone in the supply closet. Alex pulls out her phone and texts her.

 

_ i miss you already xx _

 

///

 

Alex has always loved her job. In her years as an intern and residence, she’s worked long hours, pushed herself to the limit, and always been excited by the prospect of the challenges the new days bring. But since meeting Maggie, Alex has spent more and more time looking away from the hospital for her happiness. 

 

The more she thinks about it, the more she wonders why they’ve kept their relationship a secret for so long. She’s a fool, she wishes she could shout her love for Maggie from every rooftop in National City. She smiles just imagining her friends’ reactions to the news; Lucy’s been bugging her about asking Maggie out for ages. It might be a long time coming, but she’s glad they’re finally going to tell their friends. Their friend group was eclectic at best, a solid mix of Alex and Kara and their close work friends and the few police officers they’d met through Winn and Maggie.

 

“Big plans tonight, Danvers?” Lucy asks as she and Alex pack their bags after a long day.

 

“Actually, yes,” Alex smiles. 

 

“Do share.”

 

“All in good time.”

 

“Come on, Alex. Give me some details, it’s not fair, you know everything about James and me.”

 

Alex cringes at the thought of Lucy having sex with an attending. “Yeah but not because I want to. Believe me, I’d rather not know about Dr. Olsen’s sex life.”

 

Their pagers go off in unison, blaring loudly in the quiet room. Alex rolls her eyes, of course she gets paged right before she’s about to leave. 

 

“It’s a 9-1-1,” Lucy mutters, and Alex frowns as she checks her own. 

 

“Think we should go? I mean, our shift ended and I’ve got a whole night planned.” Lucy says, and Alex wishes they could. Maggie’s probably waiting for her downstairs. 

 

The pagers go off again.

 

“I guess we should go check it out.”

 

Alex pulls out her phone and pulls up her chat with Maggie.

 

_ got called into a 911, hopefully wont be too long. will msg u when i have more info x _

 

By the time she looks up, Lucy’s gone.

 

Alex chases after her, hoping Maggie won’t be too mad.

 

///

 

The ER is a cacophony of chaos, filled with moving bodies and an air of panic, even more so than usual. 

 

“Vasquez, what’s going on? I got paged.” Alex asks a passing trauma nurse. 

 

“Gunman opened fire in a police station. Jones paged you to trauma room three.” 

 

Alex rounds the corner, dodging gurneys filled with gunshot victims. 

 

“Winn??”

 

He stands against the wall, and even from several feet away, Alex can tell he’s paler than usual. She rushes up to him.

 

“Are you okay? Have you been shot?”

 

“I’m fine,” he says, his voice shaky. “But-”

 

The door of trauma room three bursts open, and Alex catches a glimpse of Maggie, lying on the table. She lies there, bloodied and still, and Alex freezes at the sight of her. The door swings shut.

 

“Maggie got shot,” Winn whispers.

 

For just a moment, she can’t believe this is real. Maggie is supposed to be waiting outside, annoyed that Alex is running late. Maggie is supposed to be ready to take Alex out for drinks, to tell their friends that they’re dating. She’s supposed to be smiling at Alex like a love-drunk idiot from across the booth at their favorite bar. In no world is Maggie lying in the trauma room, fighting for her life.

 

For a moment, Alex is frozen. And then, she’s pushing open the door, ready to help save the life of the woman she loves.

 

“Dr. Jones?” she says, snapping on a pair of gloves.

 

“Danvers, I need your hands,” Jonn replies. “Bullet wounds to the chest and abdomen. Stable for now, but we’re going straight to the OR.”

 

“Alex,” Maggie rasps, and Alex gasps.

 

“The patient is conscious?” she asks sharply.

 

“A fighter,” Jonn says. “I’m gonna go ahead and scrub in, you help transport the patient, okay?”

 

But Alex is lost, not for the first time, in Maggie’s eyes. They’re glassy and barely focusing, but Alex can’t look away, feeling as though maybe this is the last time she’ll ever get to see them open. A million things rush through her mind -  _ they fought earlier, they need more time together, she needs to know i love her  _ \- but one thought rises above the rest, screaming incessantly, reverberating through her:

 

Maggie’s going to die.

 

“Danvers!” Dr. Jones says, pulling her from the spiral she was about to head down. “Did you hear me?”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

Then Jonn is gone and the nurses bustle around them and Alex finds a moment to lean down and whisper into Maggie’s ear. 

 

“I’m right here,” she whispers. “You’re going to be okay.”

And then they’re wheeling Maggie to the OR and Alex holds onto her bloodied hand and before she knows it they’ve opened her up and she’s staring at the insides of her… her girlfriend? Lover? She can’t think straight, barely holding back the anger and sadness that consumes her as she works to save Maggie’s life.

 

“What the fuck happened here?” Alex mutters as she works carefully, to fix Maggie’s wounds.

 

“Some trash they locked up a while ago. Got out and was looking to get even. I heard he was in one of the trauma rooms, too.”

 

“I hope he fucking dies,” Alex says.

 

“Might I remind you of your hippocratic oath, Dr. Danvers, and the fact that there are interns listening.”

 

“That oath means I’d have to try and save him if I were his doctor, not that I can’t hope he dies a painful fucking death.”

 

“Alex,” Jonn says, in a warning tone.

 

“Maggie is-” she stops. She knows that Jonn will make her leave if he knew of their relationship. But she can’t leave. She won’t leave. “Maggie is my friend.”

 

“So let’s focus on saving her, rather than on something we cannot control?” 

 

So they do. They work for hours, fixing her insides. Alex watches Maggie’s heart beat weakly inside her chest, and she wills it to hold on, to keep going, promising herself along the way that everything will be okay.

 

And then finally, they take a step back. Maggie’s stable, and they’ve done everything they can, and now they just have to wait for her to wake up.

 

“Dr. Teschmacher, would you like to close up?” Jonn says to the intern.

 

“I’ve got it,” Alex says.

 

“Are you sure, it-”

 

“I’ve got it, Dr. Jones.”

 

Alex begins to sew Maggie back together, closing the wounds and, for reasons she’s not too sure of, she mutters the prayers her grandparents once taught her under her breath, humbly accepting the help of any deity listening to make sure Maggie would be okay.

 

When she’s done, she retreats to the scrub room, pulling off her gloves and mask.

 

Suddenly she can’t breathe. Her eyes well with tears and her breaths come short and rough and she realises that she’s crying as sobs rip through her. She stares at the sink in front of her but all she can see is Maggie’s heart, Maggie’s blood, her insides broken and waiting to be fixed.

 

She doesn’t know where Lucy comes from, but she’s there suddenly, her arms wrapped tightly around Alex.

 

“C’mon, Alex. She’s okay. She’s okay.”

 

“She was so broken. She-”

 

“I know.”

 

“No. You don’t.”

 

“You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like to see a friend like that.”

 

Of course Lucy doesn’t know, Alex thinks. They never told her, they never told anybody.

 

So she sits and she lets her friend hug her and accepts that she can’t do anything other than hope for the best.

 

///

 

The steady beeping from Maggie’s monitors keep Alex going. She sets up camp by Maggie’s side, and vows not to leave until she opens her eyes again.

 

“It was stupid,” she says aloud, hoping that Maggie can hear her on some level. “Maybe you thought I was scared. I hate to think that you thought I was ashamed of you. I just… I was so caught up in what we had and how special it was…”

 

“How special what was?” comes a voice from the doorway. Alex turns and sees Kara leaning against the frame, cleaning her glasses on the edge of her scrubs.

 

“What’re you doing down here? There are no tiny babies for you to save down here.”

 

Kara wanders to Alex’s side, and takes Maggie’s chart from her hands. She reads it over.

 

“You’re ignoring my question,” she says as she reads. “What was special?”

 

Alex regards the tubes sticking out of Maggie, the slow rise and and fall of her chest as the ventilator helps her breathe. She thinks about how unfair it is that she’s lying there, how they should be waking up in each other’s arms right about now. Maybe Maggie would’ve driven her to work and kissed her goodbye in front of their friends. 

 

“I…”

 

But how is she supposed to tell Kara when this feels like a dream? How is she supposed to tell her how much she loved the way Maggie laughed at her stupid jokes, and how she knew exactly which buttons to press to drive Alex mad? How could she possibly tell Kara about how Maggie liked her coffee black and her toasted bagel with nothing on it and she knew that because they’d spent countless mornings in each other’s company, after the countless nights they’d spent learning each other’s bodies and making love over and over and over again. How could she tell Kara that she was irrevocably and irretrievably in love with Maggie, who lies beside them, barely alive?

 

“She’s special,” Alex whispers, and she hopes Kara understands what she’s trying to say, she hopes Kara can use some of that paediatrics intuition she’s always bragging about to know just how much Alex loves Maggie.

 

“And she’s strong,” Kara adds. “She’s gonna make it.”

 

“Jonn said she’s doing as can be expected. We just have to wait and see if she wakes up in the next forty eight hours.”

 

“And if not?”

 

Alex shrugs. After forty eight hours, and it’s not looking good. 

 

She takes Maggie’s hand in her own and she squeezes tightly. 

 

“You got this,” she tells her. “You’ll be okay.”

 

///

 

Alex stays by her side.

 

Her friends drop in and bring her food and offer to stay with Maggie while Alex gets some rest. But Alex stays. She stays and she watches for any sign of consciousness. 

 

“Admin tried reaching her parents, but they didn’t respond,” Lucy tells Alex. She sits on Maggie’s other side; they might not be best friends, but Lucy can see how much they mean to each other. 

 

“She doesn’t speak to her parents,” Alex says automatically. “They kicked her out when she was fourteen and her aunt took her in.”

 

“Holy shit.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

All Alex can think about is how Maggie had to hide who she was for so long, and how she faced rejection almost instantaneously and guilt grows in the pit of Alex’s being once again.

 

Lucy hesitates for a second. “Hey Alex?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Maybe it’s time to call Maggie’s aunt.”

 

Alex’s blood goes cold.

 

“Why?” She knows the answer.

 

“Because she’d want to be here. And because it’s been thirty two hours, and she’s not awake.”

 

“She’s got time.”

 

“I know. But still.”

 

“She’s going to wake up.” Alex’s voice is forceful, aggressive, and it takes Lucy by surprise.

 

“Alex,” she reasons, “she’ll want a chance to-”

 

“No. She’s going to wake up. She has to wake up.”

 

“Alex.”

 

“No.” Alex turns to Maggie. “You hear that? You’re not going to die. I’ve been here the whole time. I’m not going to let you die. I’m not going to. You’re going to be okay. You’ve got to be okay. You gotta wake up. For me. Please, Maggie.” Tears fall from her eyes and she doesn’t quite recognise her own voice but all she can focus on is Maggie’s lifeless form. “Wake up, baby. For me. Do it for me, please. Come on, baby. If you don’t wake up I won’t be able to say sorry. If you don’t wake up, I won’t be able to forgive you.”

 

“For dying?” Lucy asks.

 

“No!” Alex yells. “For making me love her! C’mon, Maggie. Please. Please.”

 

Alex drapes herself over Maggie’s body, wishing, praying, that somehow she hears her and wakes up. Lucy pulls her up, and sits her in the chair and again, she holds her until her breathing evens out. 

 

“I love her,” Alex admits. Saying it out loud feels right. Saying it out loud makes her feel like she’s found her purpose.

 

“Alex. Please, go get some sleep. For just a couple of hours in one of the on-call rooms. I’ll stay here the whole time, I promise. You need to get a hold of yourself.”

 

“You’ll page me if anything happens?”

 

“Of course.”

 

Alex hesitates. “And you’ll make sure they call her aunt?”

 

“I swear.”

 

She looks to Maggie who lies unmoving, and back to Lucy.

 

“It’s okay,” she says, “I’m fine right here.”

 

///

 

She must’ve fallen asleep at some point, because by the time she wakes up, she’s slumped over Maggie’s bed, their hands tangled together, and she can hear voices. She rubs the sleep from her eyes, and immediately regrets sleeping at a weird angle when she feels how stiff her neck is.

 

But when she sits up straight, she sees Lucy talking and taking Maggie’s vitals and then she hears a gravelly voice say,

 

“Nice of you to join us, Danvers.”

 

She thinks she might be dreaming, but Maggie’s eyes are open and she’s awake and she’s smiling despite the fact that she almost died.

 

“Hey, you,” she says softly.

 

“Hi,” Maggie replies.

 

“Y’all are so gay,” Lucy whispers.

 

Maggie smiles. “So she knows?”

 

“Alex spilled everything.”

 

“Oh yeah? What did you tell her?”

 

Alex leans over, and gently kisses Maggie. Her lips are chapped and there’s a nose cannula that’s in the way but Alex kisses her and god, does she savor it. 

 

“I told her how much I love you.”

 

“You’re just saying that because I almost died.”

 

Alex shakes her head. “No. I love you. God, I love you so much and then you could’ve died and I’m so sorry about everything, you shouldn’t have had to ask me--”

 

“Don’t even worry about it,” Maggie tells her. “And Danvers?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I love you, too.”

 

Alex kisses her again, the woman she loves and will keep loving for as long as she’s able.

 

And for now, at least, she knows everything will be alright.

**Author's Note:**

> as always find me on tumblr at murdershegoat


End file.
